1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a power simulation system, a power simulation method, and a computer-readable recording medium for a recording power simulation program and, more particularly, a technology capable of implementing high precision power simulation while maintaining a processing speed of simulation at considerably high level.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the event that a package used for a processor is selected or a battery capacity is selected, there is necessity of calculating a power value consumed in the processor (power consumption value). As means for calculating the power consumption, such a technology has been known that the processor is supposed virtually and then a power consumption value required when a program to be executed by a processor (object program) is executed is calculated according to simulation. As simulation calculating the power consumption value (power simulation), two techniques have been disclosed as follows.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing a power simulation system according to a first related art. The power simulation system comprises a tracer 3 for receiving an instruction sequence of the object program 1 executed by the processor and then generating trace information 5, and a power calculator 27 for receiving the trace information 5 and then calculating power information 29 as a power consumption value per instruction by use of power consumption library per instruction 25.
In the first related art, only the trace information 5 of the object program 1 has been considered to achieve high speed simulation. More particularly, a consumption power value per instruction is calculated in advance and are prepared as a library. Power consumption values are calculated with the use of library data which correspond to execution instructions obtained by the tracer 3. In the simulation process using the above configuration, a processing time of simulation has been able to be shortened extremely but there has been a drawback that considerable error is caused to thus result in low precision simulation since only one power consumption library is prepared every instruction. In particular, such error has been further increased in recent complicated microprocessor.
FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing a power simulation system according to a second related art. This power simulation system comprises a signal converter 31 for converting the object program 1 into signal values when the object program 1 is executed by the actual processor to generate gate level input signal values 33, and a gate level simulator 35 for receiving the gate level input signal values 33 generated and then generating high precision power information 37 by executing simulation at gate level.
In the second related art, the object program at instruction level is converted automatically into signal values when such object program is executed by the actual processor. Power consumption is calculated by executing simulation while operating actually an inside of the processor at lower gate level. With this power simulation system, since simulation can be executed with implementing precisely an operation in the processor at lower level such as gate level, the simulation result can be achieved with high precision. However, there has been a drawback that a enormous processing time is required for the execution of simulation so that it takes a lot of time to execute such power simulation.
As stated above, according to the power simulation system according to the first related art, there has been such a drawback that, although the processing time of simulation can be reduced extremely, considerable error is caused to thus result in low precision simulation since only one power consumption library is prepared every instruction. In addition, according to the power simulation system according to the second related art, there has been such a drawback that, although the simulation result can be achieved with high precision, the enormous processing time is required for the execution of simulation so that it requires a lot of time to execute such power simulation.